More about intensification of land use

The Dutch Country Farmer's Market produce stand Burtonsville, Md. is likely to be chewed up by new development in the Inter-County Connector Corridor. Photographer: Matt Sheehan/The Washington Post.

In "Connecting with Future as Highway Takes Shape: Developers, Owners Look Down the Road at Potential For Montgomery Businesses," today's Post has another story about how the Inter-county Connector in Montgomery and Prince George's County will change and intensify land use along the way.

From the article:

"When highways expand, money follows. If this road is built, many of the businesses along its route could be bought up or crowded out by an explosion of much bigger development. "At some point some of the kids hit that point where they'd rather look at the checkbook than run the business," said Stewart Greenebaum, a major developer in the area who said sweeping away the car lot would allow a mixed-use development. "The lure of being able to sell when the price is right, that's what makes the world go around."

Montgomery officials say the intercounty connector is not designed to prompt new development. They've promised a strict policy of not rezoning any land along the proposed highway, which would cut through an area where much of the land has already been built up, mostly with houses. But a close look at one narrow strip in the eastern part of Montgomery, along Route 29, reveals the road's potential to greatly intensify development, planting the seeds along one suburban highway of what could over time become a new urban corridor.

Based on current zoning, 10 commercially zoned parcels could support nearly 10 million additional square feet of office, retail or housing, from Zimmerman's Hardware store in Burtonsville, which could only add a building the size of two tennis courts on its property, to the WesTech Business Park near the Prince George's County line, which could add an office building the size of eight football fields stacked on top of each other, according to zoning records, local developers, planners and land use lawyers."
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Remember the line from the movie Casablanca?

Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!

Well, I'm shocked, shocked to find out that this is more about enabling sprawl and intensification of land use...

The article has a nice graphic of Rte. 29 (Colesville Road) and the development "opportunities" along the way.